April 20: Spellbound (1945 -- Alfred Hitchcock)

★★★★
This film is a taunt, creative, mature step into film for Hitchcock, and I like it the best of the ones I’ve been watching lately.

One of its many pleasures is that Ben Hecht’s script is so tight. Rebecca seems to stagger about ¾ though before regaining its balance, but all the details here are neatly tied together so elements contribute naturally and consistently to the action. We hear early on that Constance is athletic, and the climax occurs with her skiing. Likewise, the early part of the film talks about her lack of humanity and passion in treating her patients, but her character grows through the film as her love for Dr. Edwards humanizes her approach to therapy. Even the detail about Dr. Murchison’s short vacation has important ramifications as Spellbound approaches its end, as does the oft-repeated observation about Edwards that he’s younger than many of the doctors thought he would be.

 In a 1945 film about psychoanalysis, a certain amount of exposition is inevitable, but the screenplay manages to work it into the script so the exposition functions while also providing viewers with important infomation. A man suffering from a guilt complex may be dangerous, explain several of the film’s doctors, and when we see Edwards walking around with a razor, that information heightens our tension. And the same information helps explain the actions of one of the particularly violent patients at Green Manors. The exposition here makes Spellbound a more suspenseful film while giving us information we need to follow the story.

 Spellbound also has a consistency of style that I like. In the first embrace between Constance and Edwards, we cut to an inner montage of doors sequentially opening, a flash to a psychological, symbolic language that we later hear Constance refer to when she talks about “doors opening.” That scene sets the stage for the film’s well-known Dali dream sequence, itself a set of psychological symbols. With both of these sequences in the film, as well as the important flashback to Edwards’ childhood, Spellbound’s diversions into the psychological don’t disrupt the film’s narrative at all. It’s all part of a nice, consistent tone.

 George Barnes is back as cinematographer here, too, and his touch gives Spellbound even more unity. He uses the same mood-evoking shadows here as in Rebecca and the same upward angle shots to disorient the viewer. Rooms are spacious and luminous or crowded with baroque detail as called for by the characters and mood. We look up the stairs as Edwards descends to us with the razor trailing a long shadow.

The music is a great compliment to the visuals here, too. Spellbound uses the ethereal theremin to great effect in creepy scenes like when Constance uses a fork to make an oval on the tablecloth and Edwards freaks out. We hear it in all the weird scenes – Edwards’ panic in the surgery room, his breakdown at Dr. Brulov’s as he’s walking around the bedroom carrying a razor while Constance sleeps. If I think of the theremin as part of B sci-fi, I also think of it as psychosis, and Spellbound is the film that established that link.

I thought back to Rebecca in several places here. It’s interesting that, again, most of the point of view is though the eyes of a woman. We mostly see and learn what she does, and much of the suspense here comes from what she doesn’t see or know. It’s a device that Hitchcock and Hecht use to good effect.

The humor here took me back to Rebecca and to The Lady Vanishes, too. I don’t always appreciate the humor that Hitchcock puts in his films, and I often find it distracting in this one. I can see that the colleague harassing Constance at Green Manors and the tourist doing the same thing in the hotel lobby are both showing Constance’s vulnerability, but I don’t respond to the way the harassment is portrayed. There’s something overstated and hammy in the humor here that almost excuses the behavior, and the chuckles deflate what could have added to the general threat in the film. Likewise, the broad humor of the ticket taker at the train station and the hotel detective mostly take me out of the film rather than increase my involvement in it. If memory serves, the humor in It Takes a Thief pretty much did that film in for me because it wouldn’t let me get involved in the film.

 Hitchcock can use humor effectively. He does a fine job satirizing social class in Rebecca with the arrogantly obnoxious Mrs. Van Hopper, and both Rebecca and The Lady Vanishes satirize a certain type of fleshy, robust, simple, good-humored British type. But for me, Hitchcock’s humor often dilutes the tension he has built in his film and takes me out of the movie. Since this move is so ubiquitous in Hitchcock, it’s clearly something he’s designed, perhaps a gesture at propriety to avoid evoking too much emotion. More’s the pity, in my opinion.

 Distracting humor aside, Spellbound moves along crisply and directly. It’s a fun experience of a clearly recognizable Hitchcock style.